Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) confronts the root causes of climate change, water degradation, and air pollution, by asserting direct actions and promoting locally organized solutions, in solidarity with frontline communities of resistance and an international, volunteer, grassroots network of activists.
ImperialOil/ExxonMobil’s ninth megaload on Highway 95, the second largest shipment to date, measuring 24 feet wide, 14 feet high, and 193 feet long and weighing 323,000 pounds, rolled through Moscow around midnight. But ensuing events were radically different from the previous protest on August 25-26, which resulted in six arrests. Moscow police constrained expressions of free speech and assembly by not allowing protesters to step into the street and not giving any second warnings before making arrests for which they were over-prepared.
(Video and heavily edited text provided by a megaload proponent)
Idaho Protester: “I was on the street with a Flip video camera when 200-plus protesters met the first of the larger ‘megaloads’ moving through Moscow, Idaho, on their way to Alberta tar sands mining operations. Brave people put their bodies on the line to blockade the convoy and its 400,000-pound load. Six persons were arrested for repeatedly sitting, standing, or lying in the road in front of the behemoth.”
On the first Thursday evening of the University of Idaho fall semester, the eighth and one of the biggest ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil tar sands equipment shipments arrived in Moscow, where six protesters blocked its deadly path and hundreds more demonstrated in solidarity with First Nations Canadians poisoned by tar sands operations and Keystone XL pipeline protesters at the White House.
An Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil tar sands module moving through Moscow, Idaho, shortly after midnight on August 26, 2011, resulted in multiple arrests and the largest act of civil disobedience ever recorded in Moscow, after about 150 people gathered to protest. Moscow police arrested six demonstrators who blocked the megaload for a half hour. Approximately seventy such loads are traversing Highway 95 through the city, bound for the Alberta tar sands to strip mine and process ‘dirty oil’ bitumen from the pristine boreal forest/wetland ecosystem, spew the single greatest amount of carbon emissions over North America, and deposit vast quantities of polluted water into huge, toxic lakes that leak into the Athabasca River and poison wildlife and First Nations people.
Moscow Mayor Nancy Chaney watched and later offered approving comments about the protest to the Moscow Pullman Daily News, who noted that she was saddened by the passing of the megaload through Moscow to the Alberta tar sands but felt the protest was successful. “I thought the protest was peaceful and powerful,” she said. “I think law enforcement, from my observations, handled it well.” Chaney said she hopes that Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil will consider an alternative route from the Port of Pasco up U.S. Highway 395 then Interstate 90 through Washington and Idaho and into Montana to Interstate 15. According to KRFP Radio Free Moscow, this was the least peaceful protest in the history of Moscow: Civil Disobedience Stops Tar Sands Megaload
(Video and heavily edited text provided by a megaload proponent)
Activists of Northern Rockies Rising Tide, Earth First!, and Wild Idaho Rising Tide demand Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer’s rejection of permits for the Keystone XL pipeline and ExxonMobil tar sands transports. Direct action gets the goods!
“Monstrous machines over wild and scenic Idaho and Montana highways could destroy the wilderness and roads. … To block Exxon in this deal is to start breaking chains. This Exxon tar sands obscenity is a prime example of all that is tyrannical and evil in our sick, dead system. Join us, fight the power, if not for the land, for the water, for the world you live in, then for yourself, because this is the first battle in the fight to free us all…”
Wild Idaho Rising Tide 